India's police force is pathetic': Fareed Zakaria

As yet another bomb blast at the Delhi high court coincides with a decade of the 9/11 terror strike in the United States, Fareed Zakaria, editor-at-large, Time magazine, in an interview with CNN-IBN, talks about the lessons for India from American experience and the terror threat to the world.

There are two things. Firstly, the very vigorous counter-terrorism strategy implemented through the cooperation of various countries across the world including India. After 9/11, countries started taking this problem much more seriously than they had, elevating it as a national security threat than a law enforcement threat.

That means you got intelligence agencies working, the New York Police Department, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation reaching out to their counterparts in other countries.

Once you start tracking the terrorists, their money and chasing them in the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan it's not easy to engage in large-scale terrorism. Though India has not been spared, the threat from these groups has diminished everywhere.

We have foiled many terror plans including one in India. They have been able to execute relatively very few. That means you have to keep the pressure up and engage in rigorous counter terrorism.

The American Muslim population is not radicalised in the way that parts of Europe Muslim populations is. So you don't have breeding ground or a support system for the radical jihadi groups.

I think this is one area where India needs to pay more attention. There is a dissatisfaction is some faction of the Muslim population. There is radicalism that has infected some part of Muslim population everywhere including India.

Part of it is genuine problems of discrimination, alienation and disaffection. I think the best strategy is the strategy of intolerance toward any kind of militancy or jihadi attitude.

Also the one that works hard is of integration of the Muslim population into the party polity which America has been able to do quite successfully with all its immigrant groups.

India's counter-terrorism operations have not been quite successful. When looking at the capacity and talents of intelligence agencies around the world, I don't think anyone has spoken highly about the Indian intelligence agencies.
As a matter of reporting, India's counter-terrorism operations are not regarded very high. This is an area India has not focused on a great deal.

India has not done good because as it has a large Muslim population, but again India's police force is pathetic. Look at Mumbai -- India's police force is not a police force -- it is a patronage job that is given to people to support communities, they don't know how to police.

The idea that they would reach out to community to find out the radical elements is a stretch. This is one area where modernisation is a very pressing urgency."

You need to have a much stronger police force. The reason that the US has a strong police structure is because it has evolved many communities outreach programmes in these years.

That means they go into the community and know the issues what animate them. When there is a bad element they can find it out, and address the areas of concern. That is to be combined with some sort of toughness for sure.

Even through this period of depression, crime rates have fallen in every major city. The second factor is integration of these communities. There is a feeling among few elements within the Muslim population that they are the second-class citizens.

The more that infests, the worse it is. In particular, the Muslims in Gujarat don't feel included. It means a small group within the community could provide sustenance to the jihadi elements.

Finally, on counter-terrorism, Indian intelligence does not have the technological tools; the US has. But India has the human capability that US could never have. So I say policing, integration and counter terrorism."

"It has been a success. The Al Qaeda has been vastly diminished. After 9/11, we had a fear that there would be a wave of terrorism and radicalism in the Muslim world, but Al Qaeda has been battered to the most.

The Islamic World has got a wake up call and realised that it has got cancers within its myths. The Arab spring has realised that there is something wrong with their political culture.

They have on one hand highly-repressive anarchy and on the other hand perhaps equally repressive opposition or jihadi elements that can return them to the 7th century.

The George Bush administration's decision to focus on Iraq early and the kind of resources they allocated for it was, in retrospect, a mistake. But the real danger was Pakistan, and there was much danger in Pakistan.

There should have been much focus on Pakistan. But there was no ideal policy in Pakistan, and you have to use the limited resources you have, the influence of the government, which play a double game.

But it would be fair to say that Pakistan is the only place where there has not been significant progress. But now perhaps the Pakistani government -- both civilian and military -- has learnt that they pay a heavy price for their double game.

This does not mean it has stopped, but they have gone against some terror groups. But Pakistan's support to Jihadi groups goes back to the 1940s and significantly to the 1960s.

So what has been going on for four decades is not that easy to turn off in a likely situation. Still, there is a hope that there are some growing forces those realise that they cannot be anymore recognised to the world as the breeding ground for jihadi groups.

The more this generation grows, one hopes that there would be less of terrorism.

The clash of civilisation is within the Islamic world and not between the West and the Islamic nations. There is a huge debate going on between the modernisers, moderates, extremists and the jihadis.

The US was interested to see when the millions of people went out on the streets. On the last day in Egypt, the day Mubarak fell, there were 8 million people on streets.

Perhaps it was probably the largest non-violent demonstration on the streets in history. They were asking for jobs, justice, dignity, democracy and freedom.

There America was someway irrelevant. Yes the Arabs are not happy with the America's foreign policy. But there is hardly any clash of civilisation.

What is keeping Al Qaeda at bay is the counter-terrorism strategy and not the Afghanistan occupation. The US withdrawal is not withdrawal, as such to presume. The occupation of Afghanistan is a pointless distraction.

What keeps Al Qaeda at bay is the drone attacks, raids and the intelligence gathering. That would continue. But as US forces have withdrawn, there would be a power vacuum and it would be first filled by Pakistan.

But here India would have to move to balance that Pakistani influence, by maintaining a major presence in Afghanistan. India has good relations with Afghanistan, and it has to play a big role in the regional solution.

India's interest is in stability. But it should openly say that it is going to play a role. India will have to find out how to protect and strengthen its position in the region without being ashamed of it."

The world is much safer now. The government is paying much attention now. The international cooperation is counter-terrorism campaign makes things difficult for these guys to do things.

The implementation of technology is going to remain as a challenge. There has been a democratisation of violence over the last 20 years. When we started the 9/11 probe, the whole focus was to know them and to know why they hit us.

But today, after 10 years the focus is more about us and about whether we are genuinely safer. 9/11 began with obsession about Muslim world, terrorism and Al Qaeda, but it has ended with the obsession for America.

But still there is a sense in America that we have gone on a 10-year adventure that has distracted us from some genuine concerns.

The US is still the place in Western world with strongest protection for the individual liberties. You cannot compare the powers of the French government with that of the US government. The British government has enormous police power.

The Indian government has vast police power. But the US has a strong civil right culture and constitutional tradition. There is one particular area of concern where if the government declares someone an enemy combatant, that person looses all rights.

That is troubling. But largely, the US is a place where individual rights are secured. The people need to recognise that beyond rhetoric.

Well the title seems right. nothing wrong with it. We have discussed this a number of times as to how much we lack in effective policing. The police force is nothing but a "rakhael" of the politicians who have made it impotent.

The US is still the place in Western world with strongest protection for the individual liberties. You cannot compare the powers of the French government with that of the US government. The British government has enormous police power.

The Indian government has vast police power. But the US has a strong civil right culture and constitutional tradition. There is one particular area of concern where if the government declares someone an enemy combatant, that person looses all rights.

That is troubling. But largely, the US is a place where individual rights are secured. The people need to recognise that beyond rhetoric.

Nonsense. US police brutality and and high handedness is the most famous in the Western world. Some countries are just glorified police states where people think they have Liberties and when the get screwed by the cops the realise the truth.

There are plenty of videos on the internet showing a lot of policing in the US. I saw a horrible incident of an innocent white woman being stripped naked by male cops and locked in a cell.That's not the only one.They can strip search anyone on "reasonable suspicion" degrading their dignity. US has the highest number of Prisoners in the world along with the highest rates of Prison rape often by the guards themselves.

Civil Liberties my ass, you can get jailed for a long time under terrorism charges for writing a blog about the US president and the "war on terrorism". Remember the case of Vikram Buddhi who is in jail for posting something on Yahoo.

The US is a world unto itself protected by the Atlantic an the Pacific and sharing borders with friendly puppet states. If they had been in the same socio economic situation and geographic location as India.........

Special investigative teams trying to find evidence which has been trampled upon by media and curiosity seekers. Evidence, if found, will amount to nothing. The countryâ€™s home minister talking down to the media as if addressing a crowd of retards. The prime ministerâ€™s bland â€“ and meaningless â€“assurances. The Oppositionâ€™s grotesquely gleeful fulminations inside and out of Parliament.

Yes, we have seen it all before and no doubt we will see it again. Chidambaram now blames the Delhi police. â€œWe had warned them a few months ago,â€ he says.We? Them? Is he talking about an alert sent to a foreign country? Or is he in Delhi, talking about the police of the state he works and lives in, and in spite of being home minister of the country, seems to have no control whatsoever? If nothing else, just for that supremely revealing comment, Chidambaram should resign.

We all know that the Delhi High Court was the venue of an earlier failed terrorist attempt. On 25 May this year a potentially lethal bomb didnâ€™t go off: it contained 1.5 kg of ammonium nitrate which would have killed very many people, but for a faulty detonator.The bomb was planted just a hundred metres or so at the same Delhi High Court venue as the 7/9 bomb. That terrorists would return to the scene of their failed crime should surprise no one, but it obviously surprised Delhiâ€™s police establishment.

Everyone is now talking about the Karachi Project; the Pakistani ISI funded and created a joint venture with the LeT (Lashkar-e-Taiba). Yet it wasnâ€™t our intelligence agencies which discovered this diabolical design: it was only when US agencies arrested David Coleman Headley that details of this conspiracy spilled out. (And, of course, we didnâ€™t have a clue about Headleyâ€™s many trips to this country, nor his snooping around all over with the objective of identifying targets to be hit).

Are our agencies, then, completely incompetent? This is a question that needs to be asked again and again. Or are they insufficiently funded? Everyone understands that terrorist attacks of the kind that have hit us time and time again are difficult to predict because they are indiscriminate in their timing and their targets.

Yet how have the US and the UK managed to foil them? Commonsense tells me that an informerâ€™s network would be easier to have in a poor country because there would be that many more people looking for the casual employment that this would provide. So whatâ€™s stopping us from establishing a really wide spread one?

I can think of only two reasons. The first is lack of priorities. Without doubt the nation should treat these attacks as Acts of War, and should set up a War Council against terrorism. The prime minister should quickly convene an all-party meeting to put this idea forward. Who would dare object?

Simultaneously, special courts to deal only with terrorist acts should make the death sentence mandatory with no appeal allowed to the president for clemency. Delays in dealing with these cases obviously mean that the law is no deterrent to terrorist activities. That needs to change: quick justice and severe punishments, with no exception when guilt is proved.

Another reason for our laxity is our national chalta hai attitude. After the recent Mumbai attacks in Dadar, Opera House and Zaveri Bazaar, the chief minister paid a visit to the Control Room, which is supposed to coordinate counter-terrorism measures. He found the place inadequately equipped and inadequately staffed. And this two years after 26/11

Why blame the police(or army or babus or citizens) when the onus is squarely on the Govt of the day that continues to pursue peace talks with the sponsors of terrorism?

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The problem will not be resolved even after we stop talking as talk or no talk, terror attacks will be planned and executed with ease as long as our policing sucks. We have to get the police to smell coffee.

The problem will not be resolved even after we stop talking as talk or no talk, terror attacks will be planned and executed with ease as long as our policing sucks. We have to get the police to smell coffee.

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My point is that terror cannot be stopped until and unless its source is handled. It is precisely for this reason that US went to Afghanistan. It could have also thought like us and tried to defend its mainland without the trouble of going into Astan. But US knew better. It knew, perhaps, that terrorists have to be hit in their homes. However, even the US did not go the next stage i.e. the funders, sponsors, trainers, ideologues, and sympathisers, of the terrorists must also be hit. In short, going after taliban is not enough, but more critically, go after Pakistani Army.
The same lesson holds good for India too. Going after IM, JuM, ...etc is not enough. Go after the Pakistani army and its foundations. Once the root is cut, the tree will die.

How do we go after Pakistan army is the question. Of course, no one can deny that our police can be better, way way better. Yet to heap blame on them, when they play a very small role in these events is injustice. And more importantly we will find that, if the Govt has the will, then these same inefficient police, will prove more than a handful for the terrorists.

chidambaram coming up with an excuse that not all terror attacks can be stopped...well USA and WEST is not on earth then...

DELHI POLICE tried doing its duty in batla house and lost its officer but what they got in return.. human rights grp, govt and opposition, minority grp...these thngs dont exist in usa and west police acts and no bloody grp interfere. if they, then are kept at bay... DP is in state similar to the forces who finds themselves tied up when chincoms and porkis trouble them at border...

agentperry,
very good points. Yes, when indian police try to go after terrorist, then various motivated groups intervene and try to disrupt the investigations in the name of human rights or minority rights. But the worst aspect of this is that the Govt of the day, itself, indulges in these base tactics and refuses to act against terror. In this scenario, why blame the police? Yatha raja, that praja. Police is as good as their master because they are not independent institution.

delhi police is not made to act... see CWG, a lucrative bid to tarnish image of India... no one would have thought of coming to India if god forbid anything would had happened back then... govt ordered DP to act and they did.... we had seen khalistani movt, that brkoe the spine of India... but under the supercop, mr gill, we steered out.... its political will and activeness....
5 yrs back there was demonstration in kashmir by youths demanding jobs and education but govt ignored them... 5 yrs after they demanded freedom.... how to convert gold into iron one can learn from GOI

chidambaram coming up with an excuse that not all terror attacks can be stopped...well USA and WEST is not on earth then...

DELHI POLICE tried doing its duty in batla house and lost its officer but what they got in return.. human rights grp, govt and opposition, minority grp...these thngs dont exist in usa and west police acts and no bloody grp interfere. if they, then are kept at bay... DP is in state similar to the forces who finds themselves tied up when chincoms and porkis trouble them at border...

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There are more groups in the US to shout hoarse about human rights, minorities rights etc. But, they DON'T have vote bank politics. That is the difference. Plus their system is different. Petty politicians over here do anything for "kursi", but in the US there is no kursi for them only a lawmakers tag. Only genuine politician comes up.

Police over there is not the rakhael of the politicians. Lots of differences. We have a lot to do.

the main reason for all shit in India is becuz illiterate leaders misinterpret secularism... secularism is a term that came into being in europe by the ppl when they gt fed up of the feudal landlords who were supported by churches by making them holy figures... ppl in renaissance separated polity from religion and coined SECULARISM means church and parliament will be on sep course from then onwards... in India ppl retermed it as polity paying equal attention to all religions.. that is instead of not being related to anyone in India parliament is public and related to all... and thats why all use it fro respective purpose...